Next Sunday's Sermon "Here I Am"

Exodus 3: 1 -15

When the story of the burning bush was first told in the Hebrew tradition, it portrayed a concept of God that was entirely different from the prevalent understanding of the time. In the ancient Near Eastern understanding, gods were bound to a place and were worshiped at that specific location and they were also tribal gods. However, the God that Moses—and subsequently the entire people of Israel—encountered was a God that journeyed with people. This is a familiar and comforting concept for us today, but for the early Israelites, this was a new, powerful way to experience God.

Because of some of our best experiences and sometimes our very worst experiences, we know that God is always right there with us. 

In this ancient story, God’s initial visual manifestation to Moses was as a fire that did not change or consume a bush; neither did it change that specific spot permanently. And that got his attention! Fire was a traditional symbol for God’s presence and would have been familiar to the Israelites during Moses’ time. 

This God was not some unknown deity associated with a particular time and place. This was a God who knew each of them intimately, their strengths and their  weaknesses. This was a god that even we could recognize. 

And  God still chooses to call us by name to respond and be God’s servants. God can use our weaknesses to bring ministry to others. Sometimes we choose to ignore that persistent but still small voice of God but nevertheless, God still speaks to us. We are called, just as Moses was called, to be a people who know their weaknesses, who know their human frailty. Once we embrace that, and admit it to ourselves, God will help us overcome and use our weakness. It is sheer faith in God’s power and promise that was needed from Moses and us alike.

As the story of the burning bush was a new concept of God that was different from the prevalent understanding of God in Moses’s day, I had a similar experience several years ago.  For many years I believed in a god that lived in heaven, sat on a throne and had a long white beard.  Thirty years ago, that concept began to change.  After a deep discussion with Bob Mesle at the church’s first Pastor’s Workshop, I came home to investigate a different idea about God.   

That concept is called Process Theology.  Process Theology says that basically God is love.  The concept of an old man sitting on a throne in heaven in control of the entire world no longer makes sense to me for several reasons.  For instance, if God were completely in charge of our lives and events, and was still the loving God we know, there would have been no holocaust.  There would be no unnecessary suffering. 

Some such reasons for my change of concept of God are the very fact of the presence of terrible evil in the world, modern science, and modern studies in scripture and the history of religion. In the traditional Christian view, God is omnipotent, (in other words has all the power there is), can do anything God wants (that is not self-contradictory), is omniscient and eternal (that is, stands outside of time so as to see all time at once and because of this, knows the future infallibly) and is absolutely unchangeable in every respect. 

But like the experience of Moses, my old concept of God slowly changed.  Now to my way of thinking the basic concept of process theology has value because it makes good sense and also has good ethics.  Frankly, I find the ethics of the concept of the traditional god appalling. God has been described in scripture as directly willing and causing great evils: war,  slavery, plague, famine, and even hardness of human hearts. The scriptures portray god as a deity that commanded the Israelites to destroy an entire people and even kill their babies. 

At the very best, God has been described as standing by and allowing needless suffering that God could have easily prevented. I knew that was not a god I could worship.

Over time, process theology has taught me that there is simply no reason to let our old ideas  about divine power force us into a corner where we must persuade ourselves that gross evils and needless suffering are really good and have some sort of purpose.  I felt and still do that we should have a concept of a God who is genuinely loving in a straightforward and intelligible sense. The God of process theology does everything in within divine power to work for the good. 

Dominion has proved a tragic theological model for understanding our ethical relationship to this world.  Instead I feel we must come to see ourselves as participants in a complex and fragile web of relationships in which each creature has some value and we are called to dominate none of it.  

  

I think my Bob realized that when he put great value on every life.  He would argue with me about the need to step on a spider and instead pick it up gently in a Kleenex and deposit it out on the patio. He hated to kill anything.

Process theism says God is love. It really matters if someone loves us. There is no human experience more fundamental to the Christian faith and tradition then the transforming wonder of being loved when we least deserve it. 

In process theology belief, God is constantly in every moment and in every place doing everything within God’s power to bring about the good. Process theology say divine power is persuasive , not coercive. Process theology says God works with us in sharing a vision of a better way but that God cannot force people or the world  to obey God’s will. 

It is through God’s love that all things live and move and have their being .  God is the source of our freedom and therefore cannot coerce or force the world.  I believe because God loves perfectly, God suffers with the world and calls each of us in each moment through God’s divine revelation to share the vision of the good and the beautiful.  

I have come to believe that God cannot overrule our personal freedom but waits for our free response  and constantly and with infinite patience seeks to create the best that can be gotten from each choice we make….. both good and bad.  I believe God is that still small voice that calls to us…when we listen.  God struggles to reach us through the dark glass Paul mentioned in scripture that constantly obscures our vision. 

This theology also says God is omniscient, knowing everything there is to know perfectly. But this also means knowing the future is open, as a range of possibilities and probabilities, not as fixed or settled. 

I have come to believe that every event reflects both the power of God and the power of the world. The world may be more or less responsive to God  but I believe there are no separate events in our world standing outside the laws of nature and history at which we can point and say “God alone did that”.   I believe we are the hands of God in the world. 

When I finally came to realize this, and was called to service in the church, I was able to say: “Here am I, Lord, send me”.  Even though I am a flawed individual, and I recognize my flaws and limitations, I know there are still ways I can be useful to God and to others.  In fact sometimes our flaws and imperfections help make us easier to relate to when we are attempting to be of service to others. 

 In his willingness to say “Here I am, Lord,” Moses was willing to step outside his comfort zone, embrace those parts of himself he considered “flawed,” and still serve.

Too often, we hide behind our imperfections and fears, instead of being willing to step outside our comfort zones, to fully allow ourselves to say, “Here I am, Lord.” 

May we also recognize that God calls the most unlikely people to respond. God works with our imperfections and helps make us new. We only must be willing to respond.

The power of God calling our name makes us respond “Here I am.” The power of God’s restoring vision makes us companions on the journey.